Tablet Wars : Part 2

I had coffees with my friend Marc this week. As usual, I arrived about 5 minutes late. Marc was passing the time, playing with his shiny new Playbook. Having never really gone "hands-on" with one, I asked permission to take a look. It was all the zippy, functional-UI goodness that I expect from a Blackberry device.

We then spent a few minutes comparing my first-generation iPad to his first-generation Playbook. Fortunately, Marc & I are both adults so there was none of the usual "My tablet is better/bigger/stronger/faster/sexier" than your tablet nonsense. Both of us being IT Professionals, we centered more on the device's utility.

Of course, the two most common things that people centre on in a discussion of tablets are the Apps and Flash. While Adobe maintains that if you don't have Flash, you're missing out on an awful lot of web-content, I don't really feel like I have been missing anything.

Apple's viewpoint is that Flash is a resource-hog, and I tend to agree. Watch any Flash-based video sites, and you will hear your fan speed up as the processor & RAM generate more heat ! And given the precious few resources you can cram into the tiny form-factor, Flash is a non-starter.

Further, conventional wisdom tells us that just because you CAN do something, doesn't mean you SHOULD. I have seen demonstrations of Flash on Xoom devices and Galaxy Tab devices. Flash functions, but barely. Hardly what I would characterize as a serious differentiator !

So the conversation turned to the Apps. An article I read this week indicated the Apple App Store had surpassed 500,000 Apps, while the Android Marketplace had 78,000.



Worse, I've started reading articles which indicate Android developers are struggling to monetize their creations. Marc's counter-point asked a simple question: "How many of those Apps are BUSINESS Apps ?". He runs a small-ish IT shop at an energy company, and manages a tight budget.

This led me straight to the one app, released the same day as the iPad, which made the iPad a serious business machine from Day 1. I asked Marc to fire up Microsoft Visio on his tablet. He looked at me in disbelief & said it wasn't possible. Microsoft would never publish an App for an Apple device ! No, he's right, of course. But Citrix will enable it !

Enter the Citrix Receiver for iPad. Most major corporations and companies take advantage of Citrix's XenApp and XenDesktop technologies. They all for applications and desktops to be maintained and published from a central location, while presenting a small stream to the client. The stream represents the video display, as well as keyboard and mouse inputs.

Many would push back, stating that since Visio isn't really running natively on the tablet device, it doesn't really count. I would counter that with a single free utility, I can enable the iPad to run virtually ANY business application I need. And still be able to play Angry Birds on the commute home !

The opinions expressed in this post are purely those of the author. Opinions are like noses; everyone has one and they are entitled to it !